Monday, January 1, 2007

ZON Dollars Where the Virtual & Real World Collides for Good in the World ZON DOLLARS CONCEPT-JAN 1, 2007 Dear Google Org, Amazon and Linden Labs People: I submit this idea for your consideration: It has been posted to the Internet via Google docs, its URL is: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcjvvpr5_2frhqm6 ZON Dollars Where the Virtual & Real World Collides for Good in the World: The idea for ZON dollars has its roots in three things I read as the final moments of 2006 played out: 1. Allision H Fine's wonderful new book: "Momentum-igniting social change in the connected age.", which can be purchased at Amazon. 2. Amazon's new project that uses 37signals Ruby on Rails to build a new application called Unspun , which is based on an application Amazon has called the mechanical Turk. 3.An article called: "What is Second Life?" Of course, the reference to a virtual currency comes directly from Second Life's "The Linden dollar". I guess the challenge delivered by Allision Fine in her book: "Momentum" is how do we harness technology and the economy to do good? ZON dollars is my attempt at doing just that through the creation of a virtual currency that at its core involves both voluteerism and doing good throughout the world. ZON dollars can only be earned by: 1. individuals or corporations donating to recognized charities(those that can issues tax receipts) for conversion into ZON dollars, for the sole purpose of motivating people to do good. through the use of those ZON dollars. 2. doing virtual work through participating companies like Amazon's Mechanical Turk Service, a portion, determined by the worker goes to charities in the form of ZON dollars, while the remainder goes to the virtual worker, to be used as they see fit. 3. corporations who are so confident of the worth of their product that they openly invite comparision by consumers, donate ZON dollars to encourge concensus rankings of their product using Amazon's new Unspun service. People are encouraged to vote on the best products i in those categories, and the ZON dollars are distributed to the charity that the sponsoring corporation names when they open the community concensus on their product category. ZON dollars can be converted to: 1. real currency for use to purchase goods at Amazon.com or via Google's new ecommerce system. 2. they can be converted to Linden dollars for use in Second Life. So I guess those are my inititial thoughts related to the ZON dollar concept, I will now publish this, and also email the concept to the above named entities that could actually implement the concept, a. Google.org, Amazon's Unspun & Second Life. As Allision Fine's book title says, I wonder if this concept will: 'ignite social change in the connected age" Sincerely Gregers Ritzer-January 1, 2007 4:36:47 PM

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Oldies but goldies benefit in digital revamp of charts. Record industry agrees to shakeup of Top 75 listing as downloads give new lease of life to dinosaurs of rock. [Guardian Unlimited] 10:14:45 AM

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Freesound Reaches 10000 Files. Bram writes ""The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, -not songs-... released under the Creative Commons Sampling+ License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing and browsing these samples." In less that 7 months we've grown to 30000 users and today we finally reached the first goal of the project: we've collected over 10000 samples, added by various people around the globe: only a slashdotting would be a suiting birthday cake. If you do visit Freesound, don't forget to have a look at the Geotagged Samples as they are well worth it." [Slashdot] 4:38:10 PM

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Library won't buy Sony CDs. Cory Doctorow: Edward Vielmetti reports that his local library system in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is declaring a moratorium on buying CDs from Sony: I've passed word on to our selectors not to buy any Sony/BMG copy-protected CDs for the forseeable future. Not only is this reprehensible, but we could get into some support nightmares if people try to remove the rootkit since it's gotten so much press. Link Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III (Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank) [Boing Boing] 6:11:49 PM

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

NBC Universal Delivers Content to Paid P2P Platform. A new file-sharing model has recently won the support of massive media conglomerate NBC Universal. The deal involves Peer Impact, which will soon offer movies from Universal ... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service] 1:29:52 AM

Monday, November 21, 2005

American Idiot mashed up. Cory Doctorow: American Edit is a concept mashup album that combines American Idiot with lots of eclectic material. I love the remix with the Dr Who theme! Link (Thanks, DD8!) [Boing Boing] 6:43:07 PM

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Clarion Announces VRX755VD In-Car DVD Player with iPod Interface. Clarion has announced a new in-dash touch-screen DVD player/monitor for cars that will be the company's first to integrate controls for Apple's iPod. The VRX755VD will have a seven-inch screen and a touch-screen control pad that will give access to the iPod's playlists and song information. This in and of itself isn't a terribly new feature, but so far previous head unit controls for the iPod have left a lot to be desired. Alpine's system gets the closest, but still is obviously an afterthought design. Hopefully the Clarion unit will get closer to the natural iPod interface. A call to Clarion revealed that no pictures of the VRX755VD are planned to be released until CES in January. Clarion to integrate iPod with car stereos [MacCentral] Update: An anonymous tipster writes: "Don't know if this helps at all, but a couple of my bosses (I work for a large CE Retailer) have told me that it's actually supposed to have a virtual iPod displayed on the screen, and that you can "use" the touch wheel and buttons on the screen version of the iPod." [Gizmodo] 11:04:02 PM     iTunes Canada Launches. Oh, Canada, I haven't forgotten you. I was going to put a little note in the remainders about the opening of your iTunes Music Store, but since so many of you have written in to joyfully announce it, I figure I can pass it on. To commemorate this great day in your digital music history, I downloaded the new U2 album off of AllOfMP3.com. Also, 84 cents a song! Sounds good now, but wait until the dollar plummets. Then who will be getting the good deal, huh? (Thanks, Denis!) Apple delivers iTunes Canada [ZDNet] Apple Brings iTunes Music Downloading to Canada at Lower Price [Bloomberg] Apple opens Canadian iTunes store [TheRegister] Apple opens iTunes Music Store in Canada [MacCentral] [Gizmodo] 11:03:09 PM     BBC: Blog picked as word of the year. Slow news day. [Scripting News] 6:57:17 PM

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